Blue Ribbon Technology April, 2004
By Linda Lindroth

Now that spring is here, it's time to get moving. This month's software reviews profile products that will boost students' math skills, take kids far and wide across the Internet and help you create interactive demonstrations for anything you can think of.

Study Helpers: Math Boosters
Just in time for high-stakes testing is a series of programs from Knowledge Adventure. JumpStart Study Helpers: Math Booster gives students practice with math facts, fractions, decimals and percentages. Students are certain to find the space-themed games, such as Galactic Pinball and DigiHog Drop, highly motivating for improving basic math skills.

Math Boosters is for grades 1-6. There are six skill levels within each topic – Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Fractions/Decimals/Percents and Review. There are options for Spanish audio instruction and help. The first time a player plays a game, he or she selects a topic and level, which becomes the default for that student. You'll love the auto-leveling, which automatically moves students to the next level once they're 80% successful in a level.

It's easy to customize the content for any topic or level using the Equation Builder. Create and save lists, then copy them into students' user folders to share the custom lists between classes or grade levels.

Reports can be printed to show students' progress. The Progress Report button on the toolbar displays the topic, the number of attempts and right answers and a percentage score based on the last round of play. The Teacher's Guide provides a variety of lessons and reproducible activity pages for reinforcing skills.

If your class likes Math Boosters, try Study Helpers: Spelling Bee for practice with more than 2,000 words, or custom lists with your own weekly spelling words.

For more information on the series, visit www.knowledgeadventure.com or call 800-289-4490. Mac/ Win. $19.99.

e.encyclopedia
It's a book, it's an encyclopedia, it's an Internet research tool! The new e.encyclopedia from Google and DK Interactive is all of these and more. The colorful 448-page book covers more than 600 subject areas divided into nine topics: space, earth, nature, human body, science and technology, people and places, society and beliefs, arts and entertainment and history. Each topic is color-coded at the bottom of the page to make it easy for even primary students to find topics of interest. The colored band also contains related keywords and pages. I'm impressed with the balance between text and visual illustrations, which makes this a motivating research tool for even the young reader.

The companion website offers additional information when you type the keyword from the book into the search box on the site. I entered "astronauts" into the search box to find out more about Space Day (May 2), and found animations, videos from NASA and even a tour of a space station.

For more information, visit www.dk.com or call 800-788-6262. $29.95.

Camtasia Studio 2
This software lets you easily create interactive tutorials, demonstrations and CD-based training programs to share with colleagues and students in a variety of multimedia formats.

Camtasia Studio 2 from TechSmith makes it easy to record and publish professional-looking modules. Just press F9 to start recording, capturing screens and actions for any application on your desktop. Creating training videos, visual directions for completing a class project or video for a PowerPoint presentation is as easy as hitting F9 and then working through a sample project while Camtasia records the steps with full-motion screen activity.

Editing is just as easy. Just drag and drop video, audio and pictures exactly where you want them. You can stop a video clip at any point to add elements like narration and digital video. You can use Callouts to draw attention to a specific area or task in the video window. This feature also lets you jump to a website URL or go to a specific frame in the video.

You can save in popular video formats: avi (flash movie), Macromedia Flash (swf or flv), QuickTime (mov), Windows Media Streaming (wmv), Real Media (rm) or animation file (gif).

Visit TechSmith at www.techsmith.com or call 800-517-3001. You can download a 30-day free trial of Camtasia Studio 2 or SnagIt 7, a screen capture utility. Windows, $149; Camtasia/SnagIt education bundle, $169.

Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching Pre K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.